Movie Review: 'Lekar Hum Deewana Dil'

There is a scene in this film where Dinoo (Arman Jain) is sitting outside a mud house in a village in the interiors of the country and he says a poignant line to the effect of, "We, the youngsters of today, know everything about countries abroad, but there is so much to explore within this country." Wish the debut director Arif Ali had held on to this thought and made his script revolve around it. Unfortunately, he decides to dwell on the joys and miseries of elopement and that ends up making this a bit of a yawnfest.

There was a time in the ’80s and ’90s when lovers, when faced with opposition from their families, would simply take off and elope. That was convincing then, not now. So when college-going good friends Dinoo and Karishma (Deeksha Seth) decide to run away together, they come across as nothing but dimwitted kids.

But then we know of films, which despite a not so convincing screenplay, have managed to stay above board because of their sincerity towards the chosen script. Unfortunately, LHDD doesn’t even boast of that. Lack of homework is so evident especially when Karishma’s conservative Shetty household is shown.

Dinoo aka Dinesh is a happy-go-lucky young man who is constantly compared to his older, more career-conscious brother by his family. Karishma is part of Dinoo's close set of friends. While everyone around them thinks they should be in a relationship, Dinoo and Karishma refuse to accept that. Karishma’s father is hell bent on her getting married in an arranged match and she has no option but to run away from home. Dinoo accompanies her. In their bid to run away from their respective families, they end up taking a journey through some of the unlikeliest of places. Soon they run out of money and patience with each other and what follows is highly predictable. No, they won’t use credit cards because they will be traced back by their families to wherever they are. It is unbelievable that the street-smart kids of today didn’t think of withdrawing from an ATM and vamoosing from there before they are caught. Sadly for the debuting actors, Jain and Seth, they were saddled with a script that made them look dumb, dumber and dumbest.

As you go through this 140 plus minutes of love saga, which gets increasingly irritating, you stop caring if they are together or not, because going by the storyline, it seemed like they didn’t care either. There is one sensitive scene in the courtroom, which kind of gives us an indication of what this film could have been if the director had shown a little more confidence. Jain makes a strictly decent debut, he definitely needs a lot more grooming while Deeksha seems to have the potential though this was not the platform to judge her talent.